4 minute read
WILLEM’S AI APP WINS APPLE DESIGN AWARD 2024
Oko, an app that helps blind and visually impaired people to cross intersections, has become the first Belgian app to win an Apple Design Award. The award-winning application was developed by young Antwerp-based company AYES. We spoke to co-founder Willem van de Mierop, alumnus of Group T Campus, about his pioneering work and the equally prestigious award.
The Design Awards were presented on 14 June 2024 at the WWDC conference at the futuristic Apple Park in San Francisco. For Willem, who lives and works in New York, it was a weekday domestic jaunt back and forth. “The United States is currently our largest and fastest-growing market,” confirmed Willem. “We already helped our users cross more than 3 million streets safely. “This achievement did not go unnoticed by Apple either. From over 2 million apps in the Apple Store, the jury selected Oko as the winner of the Apple Design Award 2024 in the Inclusivity category.
Ai
Willem graduated from Group T Campus in 2019 as a master in Electromechanical Engineering Technology with Intelligent Mobility as an option. During his studies, he already became fascinated by Object Oriented Programming and AI. To such an extent that he pursued another Masters in AI at the City University of London. Fully in line with this, he started working at Robovision, a company specializing in AI-based computer vision, in July 2020. Less than a year later, Willem shifts gears and embarks on an entrepreneurial journey. Together with two childhood friends -also engineers- he founded AYES.
Why this turnaround? Willem explains: “I come from an entrepreneurial family. During my studies, I was already running my own business, i.e. designing and selling jumpers. Not exactly high tech but useful for my entrepreneurial skills. But other factors came into play. One was the story of Bram, a friend of ours who is visually impaired. He told us about some of his challenges while crossing an intersection safely. Accessible pedestrian signals guide visually impaired people through traffic today, by utilizing sound to indicate the green and red signal. But only 15% of traffic lights are equipped with these devices. Bram’s story triggered us as engineers to find a solution. Thus AYES, which stands for Artificial Eyes, was born.”
Algorithm
The trio launched the Oko app. “Our app indicates when visually impaired people can safely cross the street”, explains Willem. “The smartphone’s camera films the environment, our AI software processes the images immediately and locally on the device, detecting the traffic lights. The app informs people in real time whether the lights are red or green through vibrations and sounds.”
“We built an algorithm by training it with hundreds of thousands of images of traffic lights in all possible weather conditions at thousands of different locations to make the app ‘understand’ what a traffic light looks like in all conditions. On top of that, the app also learns from itself, making it increasingly performant. For those concerned about privacy, I can say that no personal data is stored from the user unless they themselves ask for it.”
Functionalities
The new app caught on immediately. In the App Store, it immediately received a score of 4.6 out of 5. Initially, Oko only worked in the Benelux, but after a short time the team expanded the app to the US, Canada, Spain and Japan. To properly monitor the market there, Willem moved to New York. His partners continue to run the business in Antwerp. The young entrepreneurs already have their eye on a global expansion.
Expanding functionalities is also high on the agenda. “Oko is becoming a Waze-like tool for people with a disability to navigate outdoors. Recently we launched a new version with routing implemented and automatic AI detections all integrated into one application. We are now adding more accessibility information about the venues, accessible routing, community reporting and much more to facilitate everyone with a mobility disability to go out and explore new venues.”
The numbers of potential users already capture the imagination. “In Belgium alone, 210,000 people are blind or visually impaired. Globally, 300 million people have a severe visual impairment, furthermore, 1.4 billion people live with a mobility disability”, says Willem. “Recently, McKinsey & Company and the Perkings School for the Blind calculated that the so-called Disability Tech will become a $40 billion industry by 2030. The name of their white paper is not coincidentally called ‘the Rise of Inclusive Innovation’.“
Yves Persoons
www.ayes.ai
